In a recent column, published over at American Greatness, Dennis Prager looks at The Question That Explains Almost Everything, which is:
…in attempting to understand human beings, especially large groups of human beings — i.e., their society — the most important question to ask is “What in life gives you the most meaning?”
The answer does not explain everything, of course, but it explains the human condition better than any other question.
This is true.
More:
The reason is this: After food, the greatest human need and human desire is meaning. Even more so than the ability to reason or even to speak, this is the great divide between human and animal. We share all other needs with the higher animal species and share many needs with some of the lower animal species. Like them, we need food, shelter and companionship. But, while human beings seek and need meaning more than anything except food (and companionship — but for human beings, companionship usually provides some meaning, and sometimes enough), no animal needs or seeks meaning. As an aside, this is one of the reasons I believe in God, the Creator. There is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Meaning is not a biological need.
Given its unique importance, that is why what gives us meaning must be deemed the most important question.
It’s a thing that makes us Human and not Animal.
‘If we could talk to the animals….’ — why would we? We’d get no Sentience, no Meaning from them.
Mr. Prager, again:
The problem, however, is that just as the need for food has no inherent moral quality, the need for meaning has no inherent moral quality. Meaning can be found in evil just as it can be found in good….
It is a Neutral term. And we have the Free Will to manipulate [another Neutral term] it.
More:
For most Americans until the last generation, the need for meaning was filled by family, religion, community and patriotism (i.e., love of America and belief in America as Abraham Lincoln put it: as “the last best hope of earth.”
I would disagree: the tearing away of us from those Four Essentials began with The French Revolution and picked-up steam in the late 19th Century. Edmund Burke recognized this. Now, it’s just more brazen because The Left has created a Wasteland Of Immorality since then and we all have some of it’s ash upon us.
Mr. Prager continues:
So, then, what is to give meaning to Americans who have lost all or most of the above? Something has to, because the need for meaning is as built in and as universal as the need for food.
The answer is self-evident: Whatever it is, it must provide meaning without being dependent on family, community, religion or patriotism.
And what is that? Leftism.
All of leftism (not liberalism, which affirms all the traditional meaning providers) consists of meaning providers that replace community, religion, America and even family (single women are a major, even dominant, demographic of the left).
For leftists, feminism, environmentalism, socialism and trans rights provide meaning….
I disagree once more with Dennis Prager on one point: Liberalism is Leftist. From it’s earliest days, Liberalism sought to displace Right Reason [Prudence, Tradition, etc.] with Pure Reason and Science as a god. The Early Liberals were doomed when they adopted that Sterile thing called Deism.
But, except for that, his analysis is spot-on.
In the Comments section of this post, SamaraGuru offers some very good analysis:
It is my feeling — apropos the thrust of Mr. Prager’s work — that if we don’t believe in God then what we have done essentially; to use a physical allusion — is like having perfectly good eyes but always wearing a blindfold and being forced to find our ways around in the dark — because we are afraid of the light.
The problem with that untenable, artificial approach is that no amount of denial can truly enable us to block out our awareness of and connection to God — no matter how facile and adept we may be — and think ourselves clever for it — at self-blinding ourselves.
Nor do we or can we ever lose our connection to God just because we say God doesn’t exist.
However, what we do have to do, if we turn our backs on God, is create within us a divorced from reality paradigm that can only be maintained at great effort and expenditures of energy intellectually and is always insecure and fragile — necessitating that we surround ourselves with others as deluded as we and with whom we share a sacred pact. Namely that we all must tacitly agree not to think about the things we don’t want to think about and all agreed not to think about.
And, just as a drug addict has to have their daily fix; a Trump hater, for instance, needs their daily fix of NY Times propoganda and CNN lies to help them feel safe and secure; lest their tenuous grasp on their twisted realities be broken — leaving them to — God forbid — have to think for themselves.
This is why the left is so intolerant and so anti-religion — even though they claim God doesn’t exist it is as impossible for a human being to not sense, know that God is still out there patiently waiting for us to wake up and smell the reality God roses.
No wonder the left is filled with hate (an expression of fear going by a different identity); they have cut themselves completely off from the source of the love God has for all of us and all of us to feel towards each other.
They are morally utterly and totally bankrupt — and proud of it.
Human Beings need Meaning. I believe God, in a sense, ‘programmed this into our DNA’ [really, into our Souls].
Because of many factors, most especially the Left’s Relentless efforts for over a century to kill God and to plant a Malicious Cynicism in our hearts, for a long time now, we have been successfully offered an alternative: Leftist / Utopian Thinking as a replacement for God.
The trouble is: in the Leftist Ideology, all Human Beings are supposedly gods, when in Reality it is the few Left Masterminds who Rule and will Rule. God is Perfection, but Human Beings are most definitely not.
As I wrote in my book, On The Causes And Effects Of THE PRESENT CRISIS In America:
[The Leftist] refuses to deal with the Truth of Life As It Is. He would rather ding to abstract theory than confront and deal with the Real World — this is a key point and it underlies all Leftist actions.
The Leftist, therefore, is Delusional is his approach to the problems of Human Existence.
He thinks that all Pain and Suffering and Misery and even Death can be overcome — wiped-out completely — so, in his Delusional State, he plots and plans, not simply a better world, but one that will be Perfection itself, one where Heaven On Earth can be brought about in the near-future.
The Leftist believes that Reality can be molded into any shape and given whatever attributes one desires. When confronted with facts that show his theories do not make sense, the Leftist discards and denounces the evidence before him and moves on as if those facts had never existed.
He is, once again, Delusional; he is Self-Deceiving — one could even claim justifiably that the Leftist is Mentally Disturbed.
When such a person and his fellow self-deceivers gain Power And Control, they end-up bringing about the Pain and Suffering and Misery and Death they claim — endlessly — that their schemes will end. That is the inevitable result when Reality is rejected, when Human Nature and it’s Truths are denied [Denial is part of the Leftist’s basic make-up — it’s M.O.].
Soon, if we do not vanquish Leftism from this land, we will find ourselves the prisoners of Madmen and of Misfits. The process is already far-advanced, as we witness every day with the coming of the latest Absurdities and Idiocies the Leftists propose and impose and commit. [Chapter 3: Leftism]
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